FLOPPY DISKS

About:

• Decades after the unwieldy magnetic storage disks became obsolete and were phased out globally, Japan’s digital ministry has announced that it will finally do away with floppy disks and other outdated technology in a bid to modernise its bureaucracy.
• Japan may be home to some of the world’s leading tech giants, but the Japanese have always had an affinity for older technology. According to a BBC report, cassettes were still widely used in 2015.

What are floppy disks?

• Popularly used between the 1970s and 1990s, a floppy disk is a removable disk storage device used to save computer data and programmes.
• The disk, first developed by IBM, is only able to store about 800 KB of data, which is about 0.0008 GB.
• To put that in perspective, today one can find hard drives with storage up to 20 TB (20,000 GB).